


Cherry

by Batedbreath



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: 5+1 Things, Alternate Universe, Fluff, Friends to Lovers, Idiots in Love, M/M, Temporarily Unrequited Love, Unresolved Sexual Tension, scrumptious butternut squashes, together, warning for gratuitous trope use
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-18
Updated: 2018-10-18
Packaged: 2019-08-03 20:07:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,942
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16332617
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Batedbreath/pseuds/Batedbreath
Summary: 5 Times Stiles and Derek Were Boyfriends (Without Knowing It) and 1 Time They Were Boyfriends (and Definitely Knew)





	Cherry

**Author's Note:**

> Derek and Stiles have gone from begrudging allies to inseparable.
> 
>  
> 
> Edit: Translated into Russian now!! Thank you, @meowing ❤️
> 
> https://ficbook.net/readfic/7479866

(1)

“It’s fucking gross when you guys do that,” Scott said without ungluing his eyes from the television or his hands from his controller.

Stiles elbowed Scott in the arm, jostling him and thereby blowing up one of his last three spaceships. “Do what?”

Stiles glanced at Derek, momentarily taking his eyes off the screen, which was a mistake; he was down to two ships now. Derek only shrugged and went back to his book.

Scott threw them a grossed-out look. “You know,” he said meaningfully. “When you do _that_.”

Stiles blew a loud, obnoxious bubble with the bubble gum Derek had just given him. “Dude, _what_ are you talking about?” He blew another one and smacked the gum loudly.

“Normal people do not share gum. It’s disgusting and like, unsanitary or something.”

Stiles snorted and leaned back on the couch in to the warmth of Derek’s chest and shoulder. “How is that even weird? Everyone shares gum.”

“Not when someone has already started chewing it.”

“Help me out here, man.” Stiles looked up at Derek. His thick black-framed reading glasses and socked feet made him somehow even comfier to lie on. Stiles snuggled back into him and Derek threw an arm over the back of the couch behind Stiles’ head.

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Derek said, in his most aloof, bored tone and took a sip of Stiles’ Gatorade.

 

* * *

 

(2)

“It’s 40 pounds.”

“It’s not! We’re not rounding up here, dude.”

“I have a full 40 pounds on you.”

“You have 37 pounds on me.”

Derek pushed Stiles off of the glass scale in his bathroom and stepped on it himself. “It keeps fucking changing.”

Stiles stood back and watched Derek wait for the numbers to acclimate to his weight and took his time shamelessly eyeing the golden planes of his back and shoulders, his muscles shifting slightly at every movement, down to the twin dimples in his lower back, the thin black fabric of his briefs stretched over his ass -- 

“190! I told you!”

“Huh?” It was Stiles’ suggestion that Derek take off all his clothes because he was cheating the scale. He stood by it.

Derek looked up from the scale and into the mirror above it to catch Stiles’ eye. He whirled around. “Were you checking me out?”

“What? No.” Stiles hip checked him off the scale to look at the numbers blinking there. “187.3 is not 190. You’re slippin’. Better hit the gym.”

Derek rolled his eyes. “Okay, I have 37.3 pounds on you.”

“Which is not 40,” Stiles pointed out. “You owe me lunch. And I get to pick where we go.”

Derek shook his head. “You have to take this off.” He gestured at Stiles’ hoodie and jeans. “That’s giving you at least three extra pounds.”

“Are you serious?”

“Stiles, you made me take off my socks,” Derek pointed out, gesturing to his bare feet which looked oddly vulnerable against the cold tile.

“Yeah, yeah, okay,” Stiles mumbled, tugging off his hoodie and shirt simultaneously. He glanced sideways at Derek’s perfectly defined eight-pack before shoving his jeans down without unzipping them.  He stepped on to the scale and fought the desire to blush. Derek leaned around him to see the numbers blinking up at them.

“Ha! Under 40.”

“Still. We’re the same height and I have almost 40 pounds on you,” Derek smirked at him.

“We’re not the same height, you’re definitely taller, idiot.”

“ _Barely_.”

Stiles stepped off the scale. “A few inches.”

“No way. One or two.”

“Alright let’s go back to back.” 

 

* * *

 

 

(3)

It was nearly midnight when Stiles’ phone lit up and vibrated off of his bed and on to the carpet of his dorm room floor. He unstuck his sticky cheek from the comfort of his pillow to squint at the screen with one eye. He saw the name blinking at him and eyed his roommate’s empty bed before huddling under all the covers and answering, suddenly wide awake.

“I’m so proud,” he grinned at Derek’s blurry face on his phone screen. “You actually did it.”

“I already knew how to use FacePhone before you showed me.”

“It’s FaceTime.”

“That’s what I said.”

Stiles barely tamped down the excited laugh that always bubbled up whenever Derek joked with him and settled for smiling goofily at him in all his tousle-headed, bare-chested glory. He reached up to adjust his pillow behind his head; He looked like some kind of model on the cover of Men’s Health or GQ or something.

“Your new nickname is GQ.”

Derek rolled his eyes. “Why?”

“You look like one of the model dudes on the front. With the…” Stiles motioned lamely at Derek’s biceps and like, face.

Derek scrunched up his nose like he’d eaten something gross or else had been highly insulted.

“What? You do.”

Derek’s blurry face gave him a look Stiles couldn’t interpret. Stupid, shitty University Wi-Fi.

“So did you watch it yet?” Derek asked.

“Um, obviously.”

Before Stiles got on the plane to go back to school after the holidays, he and Derek had drawn up a list of all the heist movies they hadn’t seen yet. They started in the 70s with _Perfect Friday_ and were all the way up to 1991’s _Point Break._ They were getting so close to the _Ocean’s_ movies, which Derek, ridiculously, hadn’t yet seen.

“The homoerotic undertones in this one was off the charts.”

Derek laughed, like actually really laughed. Not the fake one he did sometimes so people won’t think he’s like, a pod-person or something but the uncontrolled, almost-sort of-nerdy one he did when he genuinely thought something was funny. Stiles insides went warm and his stomach turned over. He grinned helplessly back.

“You’ve said that about every one of these movies so far.”

“’Cause they were, dude, don’t tell me you didn’t feel it.”

“I’m starting to think you just have a thing for Keanu Reeves. There’s a lot of him on this list.”

“Tall, dark and handsome. A little mysterious. My kind of guy.” Stiles coughed, feeling his face go a little hot but Derek didn’t seem to notice.

“He’s weird. There’s something weird about him.”

Stiles snorted. “Yeah, because you’re allowed to call anyone _weird_.”

This provoked a soliloquy from Derek about how, of the two of them, Stiles was the weirder one, which was patently false but Stiles was too busy enjoying the banter to really care, even if it meant they never actually got around to discussing the movie. He groaned the next time he caught sight of the bright red numbers indicating the time on his roommate’s alarm clock.

“Holy shit. It’s two in the morning.” Had it really been two hours? He was going to be dead on his feet for his 8 am class. 

“Should I let you go to sleep?” Derek asked through a yawn; Casual, happy. _Should I let you go to sleep?_ Somehow sexy.

“Yeah, I’m gonna be so dead for class.”

“Okay,” Derek stretched and yawned again. “Text me tomorrow when you start on _The Big Steal._ ”

“Duh.”

 

* * *

 

(4)

“Dance with me.”

“What? Why?” Derek yelled over the music.

“’Cause everyone else is dancing,” Stiles laughed, motioning with his beer to the crowded dance floor where everyone else was. Erica and Boyd were barely visible through the throng of people and who knew where Scott and Alison got to. Derek and Stiles had been sticking to the surrounding edge near the wall, ordering more and more drinks.

“I don’t dance,” Derek said, a hint of pleading in his voice. Derek had come a long way from the monotone, one-worded dryness of Stiles’ teen years but it sometimes still surprised Stiles when he heard any outright vulnerability in Derek’s voice. He may never be the type to have a good cry every now and then, but still. Progress.

“Everyone dances,” Stiles said, pulling on the sleeve of Derek’s shirt. When he still didn’t budge, “It’s my birthday.”

Derek gave him a look that plainly said _that’s not fair and you know it_ , before downing the rest of his beer and placing it on the bar. Stiles grinned at him and grabbed his hand, making to pull him into the throng.

“Wait – can we… there’s too many people.”

Stiles looked from Derek to all the people dancing, bodies knocking and sliding against one another and pulled him towards a quieter corner. Derek allowed it but the happy, almost calm demeanor he’d had at the bar, just talking and drinking, was gone. Stiles knew for a fact the tactful thing to do here was to not ask Derek why he didn’t like dancing, but he truly didn’t get it. Derek did anything physical with an athletic grace, so it wasn’t like he’d be bad at it and he’d really eased up in the last few years, so it couldn’t be his general opposition to appearing happy.

They were halfway to the quieter corner when a blonde girl placed a hand gently on Stiles’ arm.

“Hey,” she smiled up at him. “Um, I’m gabby.”

Stiles looked from her to behind him where Derek had laced their fingers together.

“I’m Stiles,” he said, like a question. She was cute, objectively, but Stiles felt that same thing in his stomach, the thing he always felt when he was talking to cute girls. That thing like he was supposed to be feeling something but didn’t. That lack of a thing, maybe. “And, uh, this is Derek.” He pulled Derek by the hand next to him and Derek gave her a perfunctory head nod.

“Oh!” she said, noticing their entwined fingers. “Sorry, I – didn’t know.” She waved a tiny, awkward wave at them before heading back towards the group of girls she clearly came from.

Stiles looked at Derek. “What was that?”

Derek’s whole body untensed as he watched her walk away. He shrugged. “Who cares,” he said with the air of a dude who gets hit on so often that such a common occurrence hardly holds his attention. He took the lead, pulling Stiles by the hand to their new corner. It was dark and warm in the bar, made warmer by Derek’s body next to him being like a radiator and Stiles being halfway to drunk.

“Alright, let’s do this,” Stiles half-slurred.

“What are we -- ”

Before Derek could say another word, Stiles pulled him in, wrapped his arms around Derek’s neck and started swaying them prom-night style, even though the DJ was playing some upbeat pop song Stiles was pretty sure was by Kary Perry. Derek probably didn’t even know who Katy Perry was.

“Dude, do you even know who Katy Perry is?” Stiles mumbled into Derek’s neck.

Derek’s hands came up and around Stiles’ back. They were big and warm. His body sort of relaxed, too, like he’d decided to go with the swaying.

“I honestly couldn’t pick her out of a line up,” Derek said into Stiles’ hair, his warm breath ghosting over Stiles’ ear and cheek.

Stiles grinned into Derek’s shoulder and held on tighter. He wasn’t sure how long they stayed like that, swaying slowly, but he was sure at some point he felt the brush of lips against his cheek and heard a quiet, “Happy birthday,” in his ear.

 

* * *

 

(5)

Tuesdays were shit. That was a fact no matter which way Stiles looked at it. He worked all morning and then he had his least favorite class, a three hour lab, then a big ass break in which he didn’t really have the time to go home because he’d just end up turning around and coming back, so he ended up hanging out in the library for those two extra hours, chilling until he could go to another class and get home around 6 with plenty of homework. It sucked.

He normally didn’t mind opening up at Coffee Exchange; Providence got drenched in rain and snow through December and the colder it got, the less often customers came in before 9, so he got to turn on some music, make some fancy coffee for himself and do homework for a while. The snow outside glittered a clean, bright white when the first rays of morning winter sunshine gleamed down. Those few hours were pretty much the quietest Stiles’ mind ever got.

Still, it was a Tuesday, therefore inherently shit. This Tuesday also happened to be the day before school closed down and everyone went home for the holidays. Unless, of course, you were writing a senior thesis, holding down a job and couldn’t really afford a flight home anyway. Papa Stiliniski paid for a large portion of Stiles’ exorbitant tuition which meant that things like flights across the country, even for Christmas, just couldn’t happen every year.

Stiles wasn’t exactly moping about it; he’d made his peace. He had one more semester of college left, 13 more credits. He could do it.

On that particularly shitty Tuesday morning Stiles didn’t hear the bell ring when a customer came in before it even hit 8. He was hunched over the counter, spinning a pencil between his fingers, sipping the too-hot white chocolate mocha he’d made himself, absorbed in his _Sociological Imagination_ textbook, a feat unto itself. 

“Excuse me?”

Stiles looked up and felt his jaw unhinge, his heart starting to hammer a tattoo against his chest. He dropped his pencil onto his textbook.

Derek walked up to the counter, feigning innocence. “I hear they sell coffee here?”

Almost immediately Stiles felt that familiar pressure behind his eyes. He couldn’t really talk, which was a first. He walked around the counter without a word, straight into Derek’s arms. He screwed his eyes shut but he could feel hot tears tracking down his cheeks anyway. His shoulders shook with the force of his breaths, but he couldn’t even really be embarrassed about it. Derek’s hand rubbed up and down his spine.

When Stiles found his voice and his ability to speak English, he whispered, “How long can you stay?”

Derek gently released himself from Stiles’ hold to look at him. “When does school start up again?”

“Two and a half weeks,” Stiles said, still in awe. Seeing Derek in this little coffee shop, all the way across the country, just for him, was a fantasy so inconceivable, so quixotic, it almost seemed unreal. His sixteen-year-old self would balk at his giddy, dizzy relief at the sight. He wiped his forearm roughly across the tears staining his cheeks.

“Well, then I guess I’m here until then.” Derek, in his dark red sweater and jeans, sat down on the stool closest to the cash register as if it were normal. Stiles stared at him and couldn’t believe there was a point in his life when he thought Derek scary; that there was a point he _was_ scary. That there was any time in either of their lives that they weren’t exactly like this.

“I can’t leave here until 11,” Stiles blurted. The bell on the door rang as two college-aged girls walked in.

“Okay,” Derek said easily. He pulled out the book Stiles knew he was reading because they’d talked about it on the phone the night before for an hour, and said, “can I get one of whatever that is?” He gestured to Stiles’ drink and leaned over to put a twenty in the tip jar.

“I…” Stiles coughed, reigning in any stray tears threatening to come, “I can do that.”

 

* * *

 

(1)

“These are so good,” Stiles said for the fifth time, shoving another Vanilla Wafer in his mouth.

“I can’t believe you’ve never had one.”

“I just always went for Oreos. I’m finally, like, expanding my horizons.”

“Mmm,” Derek hummed around a mouthful of cookies.

Stiles’ apartment in Providence was small. The layperson may also call is ‘dilapidated’, but Stiles thought it had character. He liked the brick walls of the building and the way snow gathered on the windowsills. There were no brick houses in Beacon Hills, or California for that matter, because they’d just come tumbling down in an earthquake and they weren’t North enough for it to ever snow. The best thing about the apartment in that moment, however, was the fact that both of Stiles roommates had gone home for the holidays. 

He and Derek lay on the carpet with all the lights off, their heads underneath the haphazardly decorated Christmas tree Stiles had gotten for himself in an attempt to make the best of the holidays, looking up through the branches at the softly glowing red, green, blue, yellow lights blinking at them.

Stiles watched the lights silently, listening to the in and out of Derek’s breathing. It was perfect. Another perfect moment, just between them. How many more did he get like this? His stomach twisted itself into a knot at the thought. _Say something_ , said the voice in his head for the thousandth time. _Say something. Be brave_.

Stiles closed his eyes as he felt his heart speed up, and he knew Derek could hear it too.

“What?” Derek murmured, lulling his head to the side to look at Stiles. His face was open, eyes quietly curious. Stiles looked back at him steadily and thought they’d faced a lot in their lives but this required a different kind of bravery.

“I…”

Derek turned over on his side so as to encourage Stiles to continue, as if looking at him directly during this would make it any easier. Stiles laid back on his back and stared determinedly at the lights above, heart pounding.

“I’m going to tell you something that I probably should have told you a long ass time ago. Like, years ago. And if you still want to stay for the next two weeks, then I’d love that. If you don’t, then… that’s fine too, okay?”

When he didn’t immediately respond, Stiles peaked at him. He was watching Stiles wearily but nodded slowly.

“I’m... I’ve been…” Stiles took a deep breath. “I’m in love with you.” The silence was deafening. The lights continued to blink tauntingly, unaware and uncaring of the monumental shift that Stiles felt in his whole body. “I have been for… a long time. I’m not sure if you already knew that. I kind of thought it was obvious. But.” He breathed in through his nose, out through his mouth. “I just needed to say it out loud. To you.” He’d said the words and no one died. The world miraculously continued to spin on its axis. “I’m sorry if that’s not… what you want to hear.”

Stiles waited a few more beats before he couldn’t take it and turned to look at Derek.

His eyes were wide and bright. The colors from the lights played across the perfect planes of his face.

“Stiles. I’ve loved you for years.”

Stiles heart dropped into his stomach.

“What.”

He had not planned for this response.

Derek’s eyes went comically wide. “You must know,” he said, voice climbing in indignation. “There’s no way you don’t know. I thought we were – ignoring it. Because you didn’t want it.”

“I had no idea,” Stiles told him honestly. Distantly, he wondered if he’d ever be able to move from this spot. His limbs felt numb with the shock.

“You – how did. How the hell could you not _know_?”

“How could _you_ not know?”

“I flew across the country for your Winter break! Literally two days ago. I did that. How can anyone be that oblivious?” Stiles wasn’t sure if Derek was talking to himself at this point. He didn’t care.

“Come here,” he said urgently, scrambling out from under the tree.

“Where are we going?” Derek asked nonsensically. He maneuvered himself out from under the tree and off the ground far more gracefully.

Stiles led him by the hand the five feet over to the couch and pulled him down. “Right here,” he mumbled, distracted by the way Derek’s body was falling over his into the soft cushions. Derek leaned over him with wide eyes, his forearms bracketing Stiles’ head.

His body felt large and heavy and warm. They stared at each other.

Stiles had too many questions. ‘ _Is this real?’_ being the first one. He’d dreamed up a thousand, maybe a million scenarios in his head of the two of them, some so sappy or maudlin or sexy that Stiles couldn’t look Derek directly in the eye the next day. He’d spent what would probably add up to _months_ of his life feeling incapacitated by longing for something he could have had if he’d just asked. The time wasted was a tragedy. 

Derek’s eyes flicked between Stiles’ eyes and mouth. He leaned down, tilted his head slightly to the right and fit his mouth firmly with Stiles’. It was painstakingly unassuming and gentle, and it only lasted for a few beats of Stiles’ panicked sounding heart. He rocked back to look at Stiles.

“Was that okay?” Derek asked in the quietest voice Stiles had ever heard from him. 

Stiles threaded his fingers into the soft hair at the nape of Derek’s neck and pulled him in, mumbled, “More,” against his mouth and then they were kissing, really kissing. Derek’s mouth was hot and eager and immediately addicting, so good it knocked the breath out of him. Intoxicating. Stiles’ toes curled in his socks. Derek’s whole body just kind of collapsed from where he was holding himself up above Stiles and settled between his legs.

The next time they spoke, Derek had Stiles’ hands pinned above his head, kissing him lush and deep, his hair a little sweaty from their combined heat, clothes bunched and pulled by Stiles’ hands. Derek’s fingers tightened against the tendons of Stiles’ knuckles when he couldn’t help but let out a breathless “ah,” as Derek’s mouth traveled down to his jaw and neck. It was so achingly sexy, Stiles felt like he was vibrating.

“Stiles,” Derek murmured against his neck.

“Huh.” Stiles’ mind felt heavy and hazy.

“I got you a ticket.”

“What?”

“For Christmas.”

Stiles tried to concentrate but Derek kept kissing at that spot behind his ear. He pushed his hands up under the back of Derek’s shirt to get at the hot skin there. “You’re so warm.”

Derek didn’t seem to be listening. He pushed his face back into the space between Stiles’ ear and the couch cushion. “You smell so fucking good. You’re so…” His hips rolled down into Stiles’, his knees digging into the couch on either side of Stiles’ thighs. If it weren’t for the keys digging into his back Stiles would be sure he was having an unusually hot fever dream.

“I got you a ticket,” Derek said again, between wet kisses to the side of Stiles’ neck. He was going to have a hell of a hickey tomorrow.

“Where are we going?” Stiles murmured, trying to catch Derek’s mouth with his own. Why were they talking? Derek fisted his fingers into the longest part of Stiles’ hair and kissed him deeply.

“We’re going home. For Christmas," he breathed between kisses.

Stiles’ forced himself to pull back to look into Derek’s eyes.

“It was supposed to be a surprise,” Derek explained. He looked a little breathless, which Stiles had never really seen, not even after those punishing 6 mile runs he liked so much. “So you can see your dad. We leave the day after tomorrow.”

Stiles closed his eyes, waited for the overwhelmed feeling to pass and then decided to let himself be overwhelmed. When he opened his eyes a whole world lay ahead of him.

“I love you,” he said, honestly, bravely.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Come talk to me on tumblr :) 
> 
> xbatedbreath.tumblr.com


End file.
